Rafa cracking up?

L r dd wrote:People like TS and Pierre will make excuses for Rafa all day long because they are hypocrites of the highest degree. He's had one good premiership campaign in 6 seasons, in one he finished outside the top 4 and in this current one he'll do well to get 5th. The guy is a hateful overweight tosser who shows no real emotion and plays negative shite. He is abysmal in the transfer market and has bought 101 kids hoping to get lucky with one, the best one he's got is Insua who's turned out a little average to say the least. They overachieved last season just like Arsenal did the season before. Houllier was more succcessful and a nicer man to boot.

Glenn the Christmas Hysén wrote:

Rosicky. wrote:If they lose to Villa and Spurs in the next couple of games, they are fucked

what an insight!

(chinsight)

The Santa Stalker wrote:

L r dd wrote:People like TS and Pierre will make excuses for Rafa all day long because they are hypocrites of the highest degree. He's had one good premiership campaign in 6 seasons, in one he finished outside the top 4 and in this current one he'll do well to get 5th. The guy is a hateful overweight tosser who shows no real emotion and plays negative shite. He is abysmal in the transfer market and has bought 101 kids hoping to get lucky with one, the best one he's got is Insua who's turned out a little average to say the least. They overachieved last season just like Arsenal did the season before. Houllier was more succcessful and a nicer man to boot.

How am I a hypocrite exactly? lrdland

Benitez has brought some right dross on occasion, and made a major faux-pas when he alienated Xabi Alonso and went chasing after a player not fit to clean his boots in Gareth Barry, but his resources aren't as big as Chelsea Man Utd's and the wage bill is smaller than Arsenal's.

I agree with the post Glenn made last night where he could have gone for a load of £5-9mil players and just be qualifying for the CL with a deep squad lacking star quality outside of Gerrard (think 2006-07 when there was Crouch, Bellamy, Sissoko, Pennant, Garcia & so forth) however he's gone for the jugular by surrounding Gerrard with players of his caliber & bigger price tags (Torres, Mascherano, Johnson, Aquilani & even Babel), because the title is being craved desperately. Everything had to be near-perfect for this strategy to pay off, if it didn't he was going to be in big trouble.

They overachieved last season just like Arsenal did the season before

kas wrote:

The Santa Stalker wrote:

L r dd wrote:People like TS and Pierre will make excuses for Rafa all day long because they are hypocrites of the highest degree. He's had one good premiership campaign in 6 seasons, in one he finished outside the top 4 and in this current one he'll do well to get 5th. The guy is a hateful overweight tosser who shows no real emotion and plays negative shite. He is abysmal in the transfer market and has bought 101 kids hoping to get lucky with one, the best one he's got is Insua who's turned out a little average to say the least. They overachieved last season just like Arsenal did the season before. Houllier was more succcessful and a nicer man to boot.

How am I a hypocrite exactly? lrdland

Benitez has brought some right dross on occasion, and made a major faux-pas when he alienated Xabi Alonso and went chasing after a player not fit to clean his boots in Gareth Barry, but his resources aren't as big as Chelsea Man Utd's and the wage bill is smaller than Arsenal's.

I agree with the post Glenn made last night where he could have gone for a load of £5-9mil players and just be qualifying for the CL with a deep squad lacking star quality outside of Gerrard (think 2006-07 when there was Crouch, Bellamy, Sissoko, Pennant, Garcia & so forth) however he's gone for the jugular by surrounding Gerrard with players of his caliber & bigger price tags (Torres, Mascherano, Johnson, Aquilani & even Babel), because the title is being craved desperately. Everything had to be near-perfect for this strategy to pay off, if it didn't he was going to be in big trouble.

Glenn's point about expectations is a valid one, but it's too simple to blame everything on this one factor IMO. Even with things not being near-perfect, Benitez could have done (and can still do) things differently to try and avoid the current situation...as an example: he's probably spent a reasonable amount of money over the last 2/3 years buying loads of kids and overhauling the academy/scouting. Why is Insua the only one to make it to the first team so far? The likes of Pacheco are quite talented, can't they come into the team for the odd game instead of putting Dossena at LM?

That also links to Glenn/COTR's point about tactical flexibility...for a so called 'master tactician' (and I do rate Benitez's ability to read and neutralise an opposition's style) he's not helping himself with his stubbornness. N'Gog is in good form, so why not continue to play him and switch to a 4-4-2?

Glenn the Christmas Hysén wrote:

kas wrote:

The Santa Stalker wrote:

L r dd wrote:People like TS and Pierre will make excuses for Rafa all day long because they are hypocrites of the highest degree. He's had one good premiership campaign in 6 seasons, in one he finished outside the top 4 and in this current one he'll do well to get 5th. The guy is a hateful overweight tosser who shows no real emotion and plays negative shite. He is abysmal in the transfer market and has bought 101 kids hoping to get lucky with one, the best one he's got is Insua who's turned out a little average to say the least. They overachieved last season just like Arsenal did the season before. Houllier was more succcessful and a nicer man to boot.

How am I a hypocrite exactly? lrdland

Benitez has brought some right dross on occasion, and made a major faux-pas when he alienated Xabi Alonso and went chasing after a player not fit to clean his boots in Gareth Barry, but his resources aren't as big as Chelsea Man Utd's and the wage bill is smaller than Arsenal's.

I agree with the post Glenn made last night where he could have gone for a load of £5-9mil players and just be qualifying for the CL with a deep squad lacking star quality outside of Gerrard (think 2006-07 when there was Crouch, Bellamy, Sissoko, Pennant, Garcia & so forth) however he's gone for the jugular by surrounding Gerrard with players of his caliber & bigger price tags (Torres, Mascherano, Johnson, Aquilani & even Babel), because the title is being craved desperately. Everything had to be near-perfect for this strategy to pay off, if it didn't he was going to be in big trouble.

Glenn's point about expectations is a valid one, but it's too simple to blame everything on this one factor IMO. Even with things not being near-perfect, Benitez could have done (and can still do) things differently to try and avoid the current situation...as an example: he's probably spent a reasonable amount of money over the last 2/3 years buying loads of kids and overhauling the academy/scouting. Why is Insua the only one to make it to the first team so far? The likes of Pacheco are quite talented, can't they come into the team for the odd game instead of putting Dossena at LM?

That also links to Glenn/COTR's point about tactical flexibility...for a so called 'master tactician' (and I do rate Benitez's ability to read and neutralise an opposition's style) he's not helping himself with his stubbornness. N'Gog is in good form, so why not continue to play him and switch to a 4-4-2?

it's an interesting point, but there's no guarantee that the team would have performed any better with one of the kids in there. Torres and Gerrard were available yesterday so it make sense to revert back to the tried and tested formation. Dossena has had plenty of good games at LW and so his selection was hardly abhorrent. I would say though that it's a bad time to try and blood new players, you want these kids to come into a winning side, one at a time and there's a big jump from the youth team to Premier League, see Man United yesterday when Ritchie Ctrl Alt de Laet was atrocious. Rafa has given plenty of young players opportunities when the team was on a nice run.

The performances haven't been awful, the game yesterday saw a great deal of luck for Portsmouth, 99 times out of 100 the goals they scored would have hit the crowd, the side netting or the keeper, the last minute goals for Lyon in the Champions League turned 4 points into 1, and it's not unfair to expect that these anomalies will stop sooner or later.

L r dd wrote: The guy is a hateful overweight tosser who shows no real emotion and plays negative shite

Ritchie Ctrl Alt de Laet

stinger wrote:

Ritchie Ctrl Alt de Laet

Dualist wrote:United play attacking football for the most part. Yeah, they did the wise thing against teams Chelsea, Arsnal, Barca by parking the bus and playing Cristiano Ronaldo as lone striker. Using both the wing-forwards incl. Wayne rooney to defend. After all, they had the best defence in Europe keeping record number of clean sheets.

Btw I don't think Rafa's team played negative football last season. They are audacious when they attack. It's virtually impossible for the opponents to breath if they press like frantically nonstop machine.

stinger wrote:

Ritchie Ctrl Alt de Laet